Use F# on Windows

Option 1: Install the Visual F# Tools from Microsoft

On Windows, F# programmers commonly use the Visual F# Tools from Microsoft.

Visual Studio 2017 comes with F# support in all its editions: Community, Professional and Enterprise. The installer includes it with some of the selectable workloads, or you can select it manually in the “Individual components” tab: under the “Development activities” category, check “F# language support”.

If you already have Visual Studio 2012/13/15 Professional or above, you can use that. All recent versions of Visual Studio come with the Visual F# Tools. The Visual F# Tools are installed automatically when you first create or open an F# project. You can also install the support directly as a separate download.

Option 5: Run already compiled F# code on servers

Compiled F# code depends on the FSharp.Core.dll assembly. This file is not part of a standard .NET installation, so in order to execute applications written in F# on servers (or other machines without developer tools), it must be installed or bundled with your application. The recommended procedure is to bundle this component with your final application. The Visual F# Tools downloads from Microsoft installs FSharp.Core.dll into GAC.